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PEO EIS In the News

Army must update logistics operations as part of modernization efforts, lieutenant general says

Army.mil, November 07, 2018

FORT MEADE, Md. -- Autonomous vehicles and brigade combat teams that will be able to sustain themselves for a week in the field were among initiatives outlined by the Army's G-4, Lt. Gen. Aundre Piggee, Nov. 6.

Next-gen RFID could improve how vehicles get to the battlefield

c4isrnet.com, September 04, 2018

With incredible volumes of material on the move – think: arms and munitions, supplies, vehicles – the military quite simply needs a better way to track its stuff.
“We hear a lot of concerns about getting in-transit visibility in the last tactical mile, from the supply point to the end user,” said Jim Alexander, product lead for automated movement and identification solutions in PEO EIS – Enterprise Information Systems. “We are working with our partners and with transportation command to gather up the requirements for the next generation of in-transit visibility for DoD.”

How A Human Resources System Could Revolutionize the Army

CIVILIAN WOMEN MAKING WAVES IN ACQUISITION LEADERSHIP POSITIONS

asc.army.mil, July 17, 2018

FORT BELVOIR, Va. (July 10, 2018)—The office of the Director for Acquisition Career Management (DACM) this spring announced the selection of three civilian women to run major programs for the Army. The announcement came as the DACM released the 2019 Army Acquisition Centralized Selection List, those chosen by the Army acquisition executive after recommendations from the board and the DACM to be product or project managers for acquisition programs.

Follow the LMP road: Modernizing US Army logistics

defensenews.com, June 25, 2018

The U.S. Army Logistics Modernization Program has had a nearly 20-year road to sustainment, which included several firsts and established best practices for how logistics and financial enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems should be developed, deployed and sustained.

US Army’s signature logistics system completes full-system deployment

defensenews.com, June 25, 2018

By leveraging cutting-edge industry capabilities through commercial off-the-shelf software, the Global Combat Support System–Army (GCSS-Army) has transformed the way the Army arranges tactical logistics and financial management.

DoD in a state of ‘disconnectivity,’ says Army network program exec

C4ISRNET, May 10, 2018

The program executive officer for the U.S. Army’s Enterprise Information Systems, Cherie Smith, outlined her vision of the future of network capabilities across the Army and the Department of Defense by way of a frank discussion of the challenges she faces in achieving stronger network connectivity.

Listen more and speak less

Army AL&T, May 10, 2018

Take it from someone who knows: There’s a lot of overlap between being a product support manager for an Acquisition Category I program and being a minister. That someone is Billy McCain. He’s the product support manager for the Global Combat Support System – Army (GCSS-Army) at Fort Lee, Virginia, part of the Army Enterprise Systems Integration Program within the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems. He’s also an ordained minister, having earned a master’s in divinity from Virginia Union University.

Army adds more time to ITES-2S to mitigate delays to version 3

How a new Army leader wants to improve defensive cyber operations

c4isrnet.com, April 17, 2018

When Chérie A. Smith took over Program Executive Officer Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) in January 2018, she knew what to expect, having already served as acting deputy PEO for three months. The job is a sprawling task, overseeing more than 60 Department of Defense and Army acquisition programs that span the business, war-fighting and enterprise information environment mission areas.

Listen closely

asc.army.mil, April 16, 2018

In a complex world, sometimes old questions require new answers. With the changing nature of work and the mission requirement to boost the Army’s agility, modernizing the voice architecture at Army installations supports the Soldiers’ need to collaborate from anywhere, at any time and from any device.

Army’s new 30-day acquisition process for cyber capabilities isn’t just about OTAs

federalnewsradio.com, April 05, 2018

When it comes to pushing the Defense acquisition system to move as quickly as the military’s appetite for technology, other transaction authorities (OTAs) are in high fashion at the moment, both in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill.

But OTAs, in and of themselves, are not the magic bullet for speedier acquisitions. That, at least, is the Army’s take when it comes to acquiring new tools to defend its networks.

The 29th Annual Federal 100 Issue

Army boosts efficiency with task management tool

GCN.com, March 21, 2018

U.S. Forces Korea has saved about $2.2 million on program management maintenance and hosting in seven months by using a collaborative task management tool.

USFK is the fourth Army entity to use the Task Management Tool (TMT), an Accenture solution that works with the Defense Department's non-secure and secure IP networks and allows users to complete "taskers" electronically in one application. Taskers are directives or action items at the executive level that require responses. TMT gives users a common place to store and manage documents so that at any given time, anybody involved in the task knows what’s going on with it.

As Army shutters data centers, ALTESS serves as ‘staging area’ for apps that aren’t cloud-ready

federalnewsradio.com, February 09, 2018

It’s now been a little over a year since the Army issued a highly-prescriptive directive, telling its commands and installations exactly which IT systems needed to move from which data centers, which data centers had to be closed, and when.

But it became clear pretty quickly that a lot of those applications just weren’t ready to move. In many cases, their design was too antiquated to run in a modern cloud computing environment. One solution to that problem has been ALTESS, something of a hybrid between a traditional data center and a cloud environment operated by the Army in Radford, Virginia.

First Army Base Installs IP Infrastructure

afcea.org, January 31, 2018

U.S. Army stakeholders are working together to steadily modernize the network that reaches from the home station to the tactical edge. To understand this effort, one needs to understand the changing mission requirement for the command element at home station to maintain a consistent, secure, and reliable connection with dispersed, tactical teams maneuvering on the battlefield.

Army Opens First-of-its-Kind Training System for Wideband Satellite Operators

11 JAN 2018 - Fort Gordon, GA – The U.S. Army’s Cyber Center of Excellence (USACCoE) today unveiled the Army’s first-of-its-kind Wideband Training and Certification System (WTCS). Students attending the USACCoE’s Satellite Systems Network Coordinator Course will use WTCS to apply classroom learning to simulations generated from real-world events.
Soldiers training on WTCS will soon staff the Army’s Wideband Satellite Communications Operations Centers (WSOC) located at five military installations worldwide. At the WSOCs, operators perform satellite payload management tasks for the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) constellation of satellites, delivering world-class, resilient, assured, secured, and reliable strategic communications capability worldwide for the U.S. Army, all of DoD, other government agencies and the National Command Authority.

The WTCS allows instructors to build tailored scenarios to support specific training objectives. The WTCS reacts in real time to student input, allowing each scenario to develop realistically and simulate an unfolding situation. The first class of WSOC operators to use the WTCS is already underway and will graduate in February 2018.

COL Enrique Costas, the Program Manager for Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems (PM DCATS), says WTCS enhances the Army’s operational readiness. “Army SATCOM enables satellite communications for carrier strike groups, deployed air wings, special operations task forces, intelligence assets, and strategic forces, providing them a decisive advantage to fight and win in any environment against any adversary. By using WTCS to ‘train how we fight,’ WSOC operators will be better prepared to deliver their 24/7, no-fail mission to enable satellite communications for our Warfighters. It is all about operational readiness; the Army’s number one priority.”

PM DCATS selected the Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation (PEO STRI) to develop and field the WTCS. It is PEO STRI’s first training and simulation system for space hardware. Brigadier General William E. Cole, the Program Executive Officer for PEO STRI, stated that “Creating a complex virtual training system from the ground up which provides high fidelity and an immersive experience is second nature to PEO STRI. WSOC operators have the responsibility to ensure satellite communications are always up and running. The WTCS will be an integral part of meeting that responsibility by providing training that prepares the WSOC operators to handle basic operations and more importantly, to be able to handle anomalies and threats. WTCS offers the realistic training at an accelerated pace and a very reasonable cost.”

The WTCS is a modular, interactive training and simulation system to be used by the Army’s Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) 25S, Satellite Systems Network Coordinator Course, Additional Skill Identifier (ASI) 1C. The USACCoE WTCS consists of two classrooms including 12 student and 2 instructor classroom workstations, 6 realistic, high fidelity laboratory training workstations, and 2 instructor lab workstations. Each WTCS supports up to 12 simultaneous running simulations, each representing a “mini WSOC”.

The ribbon cutting marks the delivery of the first two of seven WTCS trainers which PM DCATS and PEO STRI will field at WSOC facilities worldwide before May 2018.

Army site gives cloud migration teams a leg up

gcn.com, January 05, 2018

The Army Application Migration Business Office (AAMBO) launched a new public-facing website to help the Army IT community get on the same page about requirements for cloud migration.

Better, faster, cheaper

asc.army.mil, December 11, 2017

How to acquire and provide capability better, faster and cheaper has been a consistent theme in defense acquisition for decades. In this era of cyber, information technology (IT) and software-intensive systems, technology moves faster than the traditional acquisition system can support. Traditional timelines for requirements, funding, development, production and fielding span years. By the time systems are delivered to Soldiers, the need they were designed to fill may be several years old.

New Army office targets IT for soldiers worldwide

militarytimes.com, December 01, 2017

Leaders at the Army Program Executive Office – Enterprise Information Systems oversee a range of network-related programs and services, and now they’re looking to bring some continuity to the process with a new assistant program executive officer focused on integration.

Computer Hardware Enterprise Software and Solutions is the Army's designated Primary Source for commercial IT

FORT BELVOIR, VA, November 9, 2017 - Army Computer Hardware, Enterprise Software and Solutions (CHESS), in coordination with the Army Contracting Command – Rock Island (ACC-RI), awarded a ceiling increase for Information Technology Enterprise Solutions – Software (ITES-SW) on Nov 7, 2017. ITES-SW is a firm-fixed-price contract. The contract ceiling has increased from $49 million to $179 million, allowing Army customers uninterrupted access to the three prime vendors supporting critical Army missions. The contract period of performance remains unchanged.

The scope of the ITES-SW contract includes commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) software products and related services that have obtained a full Certificate of Networthiness (CoN) applicable under the following categories:
IT Utility & Security
Modeling & Simulation
Multimedia & Design
Program & Development

The ceiling increase was driven by an increase in delivery orders over the past year. Doug Haskin, Product Lead, CHESS states, "The ITES-SW contract has been a runaway success story for the Army, resulting in faster acquisition times, lower prices, and improved security. This is the first contract of its kind for the Army and the demand was so great that the initial ceiling amount was reached within the first two years of the five year contract. CHESS and ACC-Rock Island are already hard at work (sooner than planned) on the follow-on ITES-SW2 contract and are planning an information exchange session with industry in December to discuss. In the meantime, this ceiling increase will allow Army customers continued access to this important contract, which includes no fees and uses CHESS' online RFQ process through our IT e-mart website.”

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About CHESS
Based at Fort Belvoir, VA., CHESS reports to the Program Executive Office, Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS). Charged by the CIO/G-6 and mandated through Army Regulation 25-1, CHESS is the Army-designated primary source for providing commercial hardware and software solutions for the Army's IT requirements. Offering simple, straightforward contract vehicles through its online Army e-commerce ordering system, the IT e-mart, CHESS directly supports the CIO/G-6 strategy by providing the benefits of continuous vendor competition for best value and consolidating requirements to maximize cost avoidance and leverage the Army's buying power. CHESS works diligently with other Army Knowledge Management partners, including the U.S. Army CIO/G-6, Information Systems Engineering Command, and Network Enterprise Technology Command to provide architecturally sound, standards-and-policy-compliant IT enterprise solutions to all Army customers around the world. For more information about CHESS, visit https://chess.army.mil/.

DoD takes Future Army Commission ideas to heart

federal news radio, October 24, 2017

The Future of the Army Commission scored a perfect 100 with the Defense Department in the recommendations it gave the Pentagon, combatant commanders and Joint Staff in its 2016 report.